


Paperwork

by piedpiper



Category: Sparks Nevada Marshal on Mars, The Thrilling Adventure Hour
Genre: Character Death, F/F, Funerals, Future Fic, M/M, Multi, You Have Been Warned, this fic's working title was the Big Angsty Sparks Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-03-01 06:06:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2762450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piedpiper/pseuds/piedpiper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He wanted," Croach repeated, "to be buried on Earth."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paperwork

**Author's Note:**

> Maddie informs me that people might want to have tissues handy when reading this. I apologize, everyone.

Cring the Cruel: “Any last words?"

Sparks Nevada: ”I'm... from Earth."

Cring the Cruel: ”Well, of course! I'll see that they bury you there!"

Sparks Nevada: “…They know to."

-Thrilling Adventure Hour Ep. #43, “Companeros”

 

_Ride along, Sparks Nevada_

_May the gamma rays serenade your way_

_Ride along, Sparks Nevada_

_You'll return to Earth again someday._

-“Ride Along, Sparks Nevada”, Sean and Sara Watkins

 

———

 

Being the Last Will and Testament of Sparks Nevada, Marshal on Mars

Stardate: 05-12-3011

I, Sparks Nevada, a resident of the Town on Mars, being of sound mind and body and writing under my own volition and not under influence of any duress, menace, fraudulent action, robots, mind-altering pollen, past or alternate timeline versions of myself or others, et cetera, do hereby declare the following to be my Last Will and Testament.

I appoint the Martian Croach the Tracker as executor of my will. If he is unable or unwilling to serve, I appoint the Red Plains Rider (G'rop N'go-goth) of Mars as alternate executor. In the event that all three of us die simultaneously, I appoint Pemily Stallwark of Earth's Moon as alternate alternate executor.

BEQUESTS:

I bequeath my badge and the office associated therewith to Croach if he wants it. If he declines the office, I authorize him to choose a new Marshal at his own discretion.

Red, you get all my gear. Fists, spurs, lasso, Midnight Jr., et cetera.

All money in my bank accounts goes to Pemily Stallwark, apart from that necessary for the arrangements described below. One-third of the money is to be used as general spending money for the Moon's Marshal Forces and the rest is for Pemily to do as she wishes with.

The letters enclosed with this will are to be distributed immediately on the event of my death to the individuals for whom the letters are labeled. If any of the addressees die before this will is read, their letter should be destroyed without opening.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR BURIAL:

My body or any parts left thereof are to be transported to my birthplace of Arvida, Colorado, Earth and buried in the desert outside the city. See attached documents for all necessary paperwork, customs and transport forms, temporary visas, etc. Necessary signatures are labeled and color coded. 

Signed:

Sparks H. Nevada

 

———

 

"This planet is... grayer than I expected from human holovision programs, the Red Plains Rider."

"Croach, I can't see in color."

"Oh. I had forgotten. I am under small onus to you for that. It is... less bright than I had expected, then."

"You and me both. Reckon most of the programs don't focus right outside spaceports. The rolling fields are all prob'ly somewhere else."

"You have never been to Earth before, the Red Plains Rider?"

Red stretched her shoulders back and cracked her neck, squinting into the blinding, strangely opaque sky. The air was dirty, full of unfamiliar smells and more oxygen-rich than she was used to. "Not proper. Mighta been born here. Mighta been born on Mars. Never had a way of findin' out, and it doesn't make much of a difference to me. I was on past Earth for a li'l bit a long time ago, but this is different."

The two of them stood on the wide, black-and-white-tiled sidewalk outside the Arvida spaceport, close together to avoid being separated by people pushing by — mostly human, some robots, every now and again an alien of a type Red didn't recognize. She didn’t think she’d ever seen so many sentient beings crammed together in one place before, nor so many people who showed not the slightest interest in learning anything about her. Croach attracted more curiosity as well as a wider berth — Red would be willing to bet most of the people here had never seen a real live Martian before. Judging by the set of Croach’s shoulders, the attention was making him twitchy.

"The Red Plains Rider?" he said, leaning closer to her to speak in a loud Martian whisper.

"Yeah?"

"These humans are giving me stranger looks than usual. I believe they have never before seen a native of G'loot Praktaw."

"Reckon you're ri—“

She stopped. They both waited expectantly for a moment and then another moment, avoiding each other's eyes. Red swore quietly.

"You want me to start sayin’ it?" she asked.

"No," Croach said quickly. "It is okay."

And it was just the two of them and the air and the noises and the sky that should have made more of an impression than it did. And floating gently beside them inside a cryo tube thanks to the latest adaptation of Martian hovertech, the coffin.

"C'mon, then," Red said. "Let's catch us a taxi out of here."

 

———

 

That one day hadn’t started out _great_ , exactly, but it hadn’t started out particularly terrible either. Red had slept in some, relishing being off official duty — five years in this house and she still wasn’t over how soft and comfortable their king-sized bed was. By the time she woke up, Sparks and Croach were already heading out the door. Sparks had called something over his shoulder at her about another gang of cyborgs stirrin’ up trouble in the volcanic hills, no big deal, he and Croach totally had it. 

She’d hollered after him to not be too hard on ‘em, then gotten up and wandered in bare feet into their Martian-mud-tiled kitchen to make herself breakfast. She didn’t want to grudge the boys some time together, and she’d dealt with her own shootin’ itch on a solo mission rounding up a couple of Jupiterians by the volcanoes just a couple days ago. Which was a little weirder now Cactoid Jim was in the habit of always bringing that one Jupe — sorry, uh, Jupiterian— and his weird goofy young’uns that sometimes looked _a lot_ like Red around for Thanksgivings and such. But hey, outlaws was outlaws. 

She’d catch up on some reading now, she thought. She didn’t mind the quiet of the empty house. The sky and stars of the open plains would always be her first home, but this place with its wide windows and its smell of warm bread and desert flowers was all right if you had to pick a roof to stay under. They’d bought the house a couple of years ago, the three of them, when Sparks’ last place had been accidentally evaporated by a technology gun, and it was the home-shaped collection of tiled floors and memories  she’d been most willing to ever call her own.

She took her polenta and padded into the living room, where she curled up on the couch and resume the latest collected works of Brik’taaw the Writer of Short Fictional Narratives. This was okay, she thought. This was gonna be an okay day.

It was early afternoon when she heard the banging on the front door. Not just knocking; desperate hammering, someone kicking the door because their hands were full but they needed the attention of the person in the house _now._ She put down her book and hurried to the door, not sure who or what she was expecting to see. 

Whatever she was expecting to find, what was outside the door was not it.

“Red,” Croach panted, his eyes wide and his arms tight under the weight of what he was carrying, “Red, they shot him, they _shot him,_ I do not know what to do—“

“Oh my god,” Red said, and her knees absolutely did not buckle and her voice absolutely did not catch, “Put him down on the floor and— and call a doctor, Croach, _right now._ ”

She knelt next to Nevada’s limp form on the floor, trying to see past the blood — so much blood, dark and sticky, oh _god_ — and slapped his face with the back of her hand once and then again. “Come _on_ , Nevada, wake up! Wake up, dang it, you gotta stay with us, you can’t — you can’t do this now! _Sparks!_ ”

She slapped him again and again and then she was kneeling on the floor with a spreading pool of Nevada’s blood soaking into her trousers and spattered on her hands. And she didn’t need a doctor to tell her that nobody without nanotech and with a hole like that in their chest could possibly still be alive.

“Never mind, Croach,” she called softly. “Never mind about the doctor. It don’t matter now.”

“He is—“

“Yeah. He’s… he’s dead, Croach. The Marshal’s dead.”

Croach knelt on the other side of Nevada, his movements clumsy and tired, and stared at him hard like maybe he had any trace left in him of a higher power that could change the laws of life and not-life. “The leader outdrew him,” he said. “He is slower than he once was— he was too slow. And so was I.” He reached out and smoothed over Nevada’s closed eyes with a hand, then touched his forehead in a gesture that might have been G’loot ritual or might not have been. Red couldn’t tell. 

“‘Tain’t your fault,” Red said. She couldn’t take her eyes off the hole in Nevada’s chest, but the stinging in her eyes was definitely just the salt from his blood. “‘Tain’t nobody but the cyborgs’ fault. I hope you got ‘em _good_ for this.”

“I consider my onus somewhat repaid.” There was an edge to Croach’s voice that Red didn’t think she’d never heard before, and right now she was _glad_ he was capable of such venom. If he hadn’t been, she thought she might’ve had to get up and walk out the door right now and hunt down those cyborgs to teach them what happened when you killed a Marshal who the Red Plains Rider happened to care about.

“Good,” she said, and swiped across her eyes with her sleeve because the stinging wouldn’t go away and her chest felt tight and this morning she hadn’t even said _I love you_ or _goodbye_. “Let’s get this blood cleaned up.” 

Life and death happened quick on the plains. Red had grown up knowing that and she didn't remember forgettin' it, but maybe she had. Maybe she'd gotten too soft, too attached and comfortable with folks she cared about stayin' alive.

She mopped up the pool of blood with some rags and wrung them out into the sink, then put a sheet over the table and hoisted Nevada's body onto it so she could scrub the stain out of the floor. It took her a couple minutes to notice Croach was gone, but at that point she wasn't in the mood to do much more'n think angrily about the fact that he wasn't helping her as she scrubbed the extra iron out of the already-reddish ceramic of the floor tiles.

She was sticky with blood and sweat and her arms ached by the time she was done, and then she had to put Nevada's body in the back and cover him with another sheet because the middle of the living room was no place for anyone’s dead body. She was just heading for the shower when Croach reappeared from upstairs with a stack of real papers in his hand.

"Paperwork?" she snapped. "Really, Croach? _Now_?"

Croach handed the top document to her wordlessly. She scanned it, leaving faint red smudges behind where she shifted her fingertips. "Being the last will and... oh."

"I determined it would be wise to check," Croach said.

Red nodded. "Yeah, all right," she sighed. “Fair enough.” Sometimes folks had strange requests in their wills, and it paid to find out what they were before the funeral’d been arranged — the _funeral,_ god, no, how could they possibly be thinking about something like a funeral today? “But—“

"He wanted to be buried on Earth," Croach said.

“But did you really n— hold on, _what_?"

"He wanted," Croach repeated, "to be buried on Earth.”

 

———

 

 ~~ _Dear_ ~~ _Croach,_

_If I never got a chance to say it before, which I really hope I did, I’m saying it now. You’re my best friend, buddy. And I know the reason you stuck around me wasn’t just for onus reasons._

_When I first met you, I have to admit I wasn’t that hot about Martians. I didn’t know a lot about you guys, and I was no xenophobe but I’d never worked with aliens from the frontier planets before. I didn’t really want a Martian around and it took me a while to change my mind. But change my mind I did, and Croach, I am so glad to have ridden with you._

_You’ve been the best deputy and the best friend a guy could hope to have. And I guess we’ve maybe been more than that in the last couple years, even if we never talked about it. It’s kind of too late to get into that now. But just so you know, buddy, the feelings were all mutual._

_Well, most of them. Maybe not about the stuff about the feet. Maybe._

_Anyway._

_I’m sorry I shot you that one time, and I hope I said that before I died too. I’m real sorry about your baby too. I could have acted so much better about that than I did and I get you better now than I did then, so yeah, I apologize. Good luck to you and Red if you have kids. You two would make real good parents. Or on the off chance that she’s not around anymore either, you find someone else who makes you happy. You deserve to be happy, pal._

_Sincerely,_

_Sparks Nevada the Human_

 

———

 

There were just two things in Sparks' will that surprised Red when she finally sat down to read it at the kitchen table. The first one was his burial provisions (which, lord, she did _not_ want to think about right now), and the second was exactly how _long_ ago it had been written. She imagined Nevada thirty years ago, younger and rougher and even more clueless, sitting down at the Marshal Station desk and typing with callused but unwrinkled hands, _In the event that all three of us die simultaneously..._

She didn't think she'd ever heard him use the word 'simultaneously' before. Of course he knew how to write like that; he’d been an Academy brat, after all. Doin’ paperwork had prob’ly been his first love. But there was something real eerie about reading his will. She couldn’t, didn’t _want_ to connect it up with the guy who she’d slept next to last night and teased instead of saying goodbye to this morning and who was now lyin’ on the coffee table with his heart all bled out.

Red'd be the first to admit she wasn't too good at processing emotions. She never had been — she’d grown up with Martians, who weren't s’posed to have emotions at all, and after the space-train wreck that her first two relationships had ended up as she'd spent a lot of time shootin' things on the plains and livin’ outta Rococoo without much human contact. She'd buried a lot of folk in graves she'd dug herself and she hadn't had much mourning to spare for most of 'em.

Strangely enough, she found herself thinking now about the time they'd buried Croach. That had been one of the very few times she'd really mourned over someone, and after the first night it'd mostly been her and Nevada spendin' a lot of time in bed sleepin' and... not sleepin'...  and wandering around Rococoo and trying not to think about anything for two months. She'd cried just once a li'l bit then, when Croach went limp and it had hit them at all once that this time wasn't gonna be like all the other times, and then she hadn’t cried again.

At she'd had a chance to say goodbye then, kinda. This time Nevada had just been… there and then gone, quick as a shooting star winkin’ out.

She wasn't gonna cry now, she told herself. She wasn't gonna. The Red Plains Rider hadn't cried in a real long time and not crying was pretty much part of her deal at this point.

Sparks'd been shot before, was the thing. There was one time, when he'd been gunned down trying to stop a rogue bounty hunter and neither Croach nor Red had been there to body-shield him, that they hadn't thought he was gonna make it. Red had dressed him down proper when he finally woke up and practically begged him to consider gettin' some kind of nanotech. He’d flat-out refused. Too gross, he'd said. So gross.

Gross enough to die over avoiding, apparently.

Fifteen minutes in the shower and Red thought maybe she'd gotten the last of Nevada's blood off'f her. She read his will carefully, beginning to end, three times and then sat on the couch with it in her hands and stared off into space. 

Croach sat down next to her at one point and put an arm around her shoulder. She collapsed against him, head on the highest-up bit of the chest she could reach, and neither of them moved for a long time. 

“We got things to do,” Red said at one point, breaking the silence briefly. “Paperwork an’ suchlike. Transport forms. But I sure as hell ain’t doin’ em today.”

“He died a hero’s death,” Croach said. “As he should have.”

“Wasn’t something I asked,” Red said. “Seriously, Croach, I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

Nobody _should_ die at sixty-four gettin’ shot by cyborgs, she thought. That wasn’t fair or right in any sense of the word. But the universe wasn’t under any obligation to be fair to anyone.

There was another knock on the door later about half an hour later, this one tentative and apologetic and sounding as if the knocker wasn't sure whether they should keep trying or just go away. Red and Croach looked at each other and had a brief semi-telepathic exchange along the lines of _can we please just pretend we didn't notice that?_ before Croach pushed himself up and went to answer the door. 

It turned out to be Jeremiah, hat in his hands and worry on his face. Of course it was Jeremiah — the man had some kind of supernatural ability to sense when things had gone wrong before any human being should be able to know about it. "Croach? Miss Rider?" he said. "Something happened to the Marshal?"

"He has been shot," Croach said flatly. "Sparks Nevada is dead."

Jeremiah stared at him. "Oooooh lordy," he said, his voice quavering. "Help."

"Ain't nothing to be done, Jeremiah," Red told him. "Don't go panickin' now."

"No, I... oh lord." Jeremiah took a deep breath and  composed himself again. "Right. Right. I gotta go tell folks, Miss Rider. Right now.”

"Yeah. Yeah, okay, Jeremiah.”

Jeremiah turned to leave, then stopped and turned back. "You... sure he's dead?" he demanded. "This ain't one of those weird technology gun things or anything?”

"No. Just a regular gun. He didn't have no nanotech. I wish I wasn't sure, but we’re sure. He's dead.”

"Right," Jeremiah said. He pulled his hat back on hard. "I... I'll just go then.”

The door slammed behind him and Croach and Red both breathed out. “Well, at least we don’t have t’tell people now,” Red said. She laced her fingers through Croach’s and squeezed his hand. “They’ll probably know on Earth by tonight.”

“Good,” Croach said. She looked at him in surprise.  

“Good,” he said again. “They should know. All should. Everywhere.”

Jeremiah knocked on their door again in the evening. Croach was curled up asleep with his head on Red’s lap on the couch at that point, and Red was trying not to move or wake him up and wondering whether maybe he _had_ been shot today, a little worried about just how worn out he seemed. “Come in,” she called toward the front door, putting a quieting hand on Croach’s shoulder when he stirred. Jeremiah poked his head in and then tiptoed just inside the door.

“Just thought we’d let you know some of us townsfolks are organizing a service for the Marshal,” he said, standing awkwardly in the doorway. “Reckon he deserves something nice. Me ’n’ Myrna Jean are takin’ care of it, you two don’t have t’ worry about it. Gonna have it tomorrow afternoon in the town square.”

Red smiled at him, or tried to. Jeremiah didn’t look like Felton, not really, but if she concentrated she could see some of his adopted father in his squint and the way he held his shoulders. It was nice to have him around, especially now Felton had been retired off-world for half a decade.

“That’s real nice of you, Jeremiah,” she said. “Tell Myrna Jean thanks from us too.”

Jeremiah nodded at her and turned to edge out again. “Oh, but Jeremiah?” Red called after him, and this wasn’t something she wanted to say but she had to say it now and not tomorrow. “The Marshal ain’t gettin’ buried here. It’s in his will. Croach ’n' I are takin’ him back to Earth.”

Jeremiah looked surprised and a little hurt for about half a second before he nodded. “‘Course. That’s where he’s… from. Stands to reason he’d want to get buried there.”

“Yeah,” Red said quietly as the doors opened and closed again. “Stands to reason.”

_Earth might be where he’s from,_ she didn’t say, _but this is where he belongs._

Red dreamed of confused and disastrous things that night, floods and tornadoes and ravaged dystopian landscapes and gunshots, and of Sparks with his stubble and rough voice and robot fists saving them, crouching behind makeshift barricades of rubble with her and Croach and breathing hard in the middle of a war that none of them had lived through, and of dying, dying, dying.

She woke up gasping and it was bright day, red-orange sun streaming through the skylight. Croach was still sleeping, his segmented back rising and falling against her chest. She could hear birds singing somewhere outside.

****She lay still for a minute, listening to Croach’s strange breathing pattern and trying to catch her own breath. She was the Red Plains Rider, she wasn’t afraid of much other than small spaces and scorpions and she wasn't going to panic about her own lifespan right now, she was okay.

She unlocked her arms from their grip around Croach and tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, Croach, wake up. We got paperwork to do.”

And god, was there paperwork. Paperwork and more paperwork, mostly filled out in Nevada's neat, dark, rarely seen handwriting but still in need of so many dates and initials and signatures. Croach was still a little shaky on pens — hell, Nevada had appointed him executor of the will before Martians had gained USSA citizenship or Croach really knew how to sign his name in English — and Red had to help him out for the first fifteen signatures or so. There were date-of-death forms and letters to city officials in Arvida and contact information for three different Colorado-based gravedigging services. Red had never thought of herself as someone who let emotions distract her from a job that needed doing, but only an hour and a half into this one she had a headache and her eyes hurt and she couldn't focus on anything in front of her.

"Bagropa, I hate paperwork," she said out loud, and tried to force a smile. "Wish Nevada was here, he'd probably enjoy this."

And all at once it all came crashing down on her, all the repressed emotional exhaustion and loss and _everything,_ and Red didn’t have the energy anymore to resist putting her head down on the dining room table and bawling her eyes out.

Croach pulled paperwork out from underneath her in an attempt to rescue it from her tears, quiet and awkward. "He would indeed have enjoyed this," he said. "He probably found enjoyment in the parts he did fill out."

Red took a deep breath and looked up from the table to glare at him. "Thanks, Croach. You're real helpful."

"Your sarcasm is not helpful in this circumstance, the Red Plains Rider. Do you believe that I am not emotionally affected by the death of Sparks Nevada?"

"You..." Red sniffed and wiped her eyes again. "Yeah. God. God, Croach, I’m sorry. I... I just can’t do this. I can’t believe we're doin' this. This ain’t right at all.”

“There is nothing that says it has to be,” Croach said. “But there are still duties that must be done. ”

People showed emotions in different ways. Red knew that, sure. Croach’d taken a long time to admit he even _had_ ‘em, and that’d gotten him kicked out of his tribe for his efforts. He’d been more lax about showin’ feelings since then, but when stuff got bad he still tended to close off from folks. She guessed she understood that, kind of.

She sighed. “Onus?” she prompted.

“If you like.” Croach shrugged and hunched his shoulders over, focusing back on the papers on the table. Red stared at him.

“Really?” she said. “You ain’t doing this for onus reasons?”

“Sparks Nevada is _dead,_ ” Croach said shortly. He didn’t look at her, but the papers in his hands crinkled slightly in his grip. “My onus or lack of one makes no difference to him now. If you do not wish to do the rest of the paperwork, I will do it.”

Well, Red guessed, it was up to Croach, wasn’t it. He didn’t technically have to pay attention to onus now; it wasn’t getting him un-outcast by his tribe. But… still. If he didn’t have onus, what the hell did he have left now Nevada was gone?

She leaned against Croach’s side and cried and cried and cried, and he did the rest of the paperwork. And then they went into the kitchen and made themselves a couple of mugs of Croach’s favorite hot cocoa that Nevada’d bought another tin of last week and tried for a while not to think about anything at all.

 

———

 

Red hadn’t been to a lot of human funeral services, and she wasn’t sure what she'd expected the ceremony on Mars to be like exactly. But whatever it was, it absolutely was not this. When she and Croach rounded the corner to the town square, led along by Jeremiah, she just stopped and stared for a minute. Croach breathed in sharply above her.

Half the dang _planet_ must be there, she thought. The square was packed with people, more'n had ever come by for a hoedown or a Settlers Day festival. There were certainly way more folks than lived in this one town, even now the original settlers were havin' great-great-grandkids. When Jeremiah’d said a service she’d thought he meant some kind of little gathering with the people they knew, not _everyone_ on this side of Mars. 

She just had to… recalibrate for a moment. Take a couple of deep breaths. This was _right._ Nevada _deserved_ this and clearly the rest of the planet thought so too. This just wasn’t what she’d expected, was all. She wasn’t overwhelmed by bein’ able to look around and see just how many other people’s lives he’d impacted. She was fine.

She looked around, catching a glimpse of a clump of blue over at the far end of the square, and wondered if that might be a group of Martians from her and Croach's — well, formerly Croach’s — tribe. She could sure see a lot of robots, some of them definitely on the planet's wanted list, and she wondered if they'd come to gloat. She didn’t want to deal with outlaws, not today, but she thought she would if she had to. Given how Croach had been acting since he’d read Nevada’s will, that looked to be prob’ly fixin’ to be her job now.

The sun was already hot in the orange sky — it was lookin' to be a real sweltering Martian summer day. Red pulled her hat down farther over her eyes and scanned the crowd for people she might recognize as Jeremiah pulled her and Croach toward the platform in the middle of the square. 

Colton Clover was there in an unnecessarily nice suit — she was gonna have to talk to him about coffins, wasn't she — and the Jiminy kids, little bouncing things who were overrunnin’ the whole town nowadays. Red wondered suddenly if, given the new scale of this whole thing, she should have called Ginny. She was on Pluto nowadays workin’ as head Troubleshooter in charge of supervising the ninety-percent-robot population, and she and Red hadn’t really spoken in a couple of years. 

_Dang_ it, she should have called Ginny, Red thought. The woman’d been married to Sparks, however briefly, and Red hadn’t even thought to let her know he’d died. She’d have to deal with that too sometime soon.

Red’d never had to think before about what organizing a full-blown funeral really meant. She’d attended a few little do’s on Mars for Martians who hadn’t outrun the local fauna or, later, townsfolk who’d been outgunned by robots.  But mostly when folks died on Mars you just dug a hole and buried ‘em. You didn’t have to fill out interplanetary transport forms or send out invitations.

_Invitations._ Like it was a _party_ or somethin’. 

Jeremiah and Myrna Jean had done the square up real nice, though. There was a platform thing that people were hanging around in the middle of the place, and it occurred to Red suddenly that possibly people were going to have speeches. _She_ might have to be involved in giving one. Somehow this thought had completely escaped her.

"Howdy, Red," a warm and naturally charismatic voice behind her said. “I was real torn up hearin' about the Marshal. It's a loss for all the galaxy that’s happened this day. How’re you 'n' Croach holdin’ up?" 

She turned around to see Cactoid Jim, still ruggedly and annoyingly handsome in his seventies and looking genuinely melancholy. And standing next to him, hands somberly in his pockets and scuffing his shoes on the ground, was Sparks Nevada.

“Hey, buddies,” Sparks said, looking up and trying to grin at them. “Red, nice hat, _super_ cute. Heyy, Croachykins! Listen, you guys, I am so, _so_ sorry about Sparks. I loved that guy’s face _sooo_ much. I’m gonna miss him oodles and oodles.”

Red and Croach gaped at him. Jim glanced at them nervously. "Uh... Jibs, darlin', maybe you should—“

And then Red was screaming her head off, " _I'll kill you, you goddamn Jupe son of a_ _bitch_ , _do you think this is a_ joke _?!_ ” and trying to get to her gun and Jim was holding her back and shouting "Red, I am so sorry, calm down, calm _down_ , Jib, _change back!_ " and Croach was trying to pull them apart and people around them were backing away and Jib Janeen in Sparks' approximate body was standing there awkwardly looking completely baffled by the fact that Red was trying to strangle him.

"Uhh, still an offensive term," Janeen said, raising one of Sparks' fingers and leaning back out of range as Red swiped at him again. "Okay, I might be missing something obvious, but have I done something, like, specifically wrong here?"

"Jib, change. Back. Now," Jim growled.

"There's still a warrant on your head, Janeen,” Red snapped, “I can shoot you now and it wouldn't be murder — Jim, lemme get at him!" and then there was a soft _whump_ of air and Janeen was suddenly a lot more purple and gelatinous and a lot less Sparks-like. 

Red deflated against Jim's arms and then pushed him away, breathing heavily.

"That weren't funny, Jupe," she said. "Where the hell do you think you get off comin' to the Marshal's funeral lookin' like him. How the _hell_ do you think people are gonna react. What the hell do you think me ’n’ Croach are gonna think?" 

Janeen still looked baffled. "It's, uh, a sign of respect? I mean, back on _Jupiter_ , everyone shows up to funerals in their best impression of the dead person, it's kind of a thing. So that they’re not really gone, you know? What, you’re telling me you don’t do that here?”

Red tried to catch her breath and realized she was crying again. She hadn’t even noticed and now she couldn’t stop. “Oh,” she said. Her chest felt constricted like she was being crushed by a Martian boa. “Oh. God damn it, Janeen. I am sorry. But no, we don’t do that here. _Ask_ about other people’s customs before you pull things like that.” 

She took another deep breath and rubbed her hands over her eyes, trying to pull herself together. She should be more composed than this for Sparks’ funeral, she thought. She _would_ have been if it weren’t for Jib damn Janeen.

There’d been a second, just a split second, that she’d thought it was really him. That Croach had come back last time he’d died, so why shouldn’t Sparks? Why _shouldn’t_ the universe give him back? But the universe didn’t care about the Marshal of Mars. It should have but it didn’t. And Sparks was really, really gone.

“I forgive you,” Janeen told magnanimously, and then amended that to, “No, wait, wait, I mean _I’m_ sorry. I don’t know all of your… weird human customs. Uhhh, you know there’s water coming out of your face, right? Are you… trying to do that? James, why is there water coming out of her face? Is what’s happening right now a normal thing for humans to do? Like, is no one else weirded out by this?”

“Please,” Croach said, “shut up.”

He put an arm around Red’s shoulders and pulled her in close. She glared at everyone in sight, daring them to comment. Sparks had been _hers_ and he was gonefor good and not coming back in anyone’s body, and she could cry if she wanted to at her own damn feller’s funeral.

“I think it’s starting,” Jim said. They all turned toward the platform where Myrna Jean Crockett was standing, her hands folded in front of her. She was a good public speaker, that girl, but right now she looked tense as all get out.

“We are gathered here today,” she said, and amplifiers from somewhere picked up her voice and carried it across the square and Red thought at least Nevada’d have been happy (and smug) to know that this what his funeral looked like, “to mourn the passing of one of the most valued members of our community. Our Marshal, Sparks Nevada, was killed yesterday in the course of his duties as Marshal on Mars—“

It was a long, long ceremony in the heat of midday, longer than any other funeral Red had ever attended. She didn’t mind, even when she started feeling her nanotech kick in to fix the sunburn forming on the back of her neck. Nobody’d had time to organize a real schedule for the day and they all knew Nevada wouldn’t have wanted any kind of priest, so mostly people were just… going up and talking about whatever they thought needed talking about at this funeral.

Jeremiah talked about all the times the Marshal had saved him and his dad and their ranch. Barlok the Wise, grizzled with age but still wise as ever, told the story about the time Sparks Nevada had saved his tribe from the flood. Cactoid Jim got up there and told everyone about what an all-round great man Sparks had been — best space Marshal in all the ‘verse, he said (“ _Why does he keep using that word?” “I have, like, totally no idea, sweetheart, you think just ‘cause we had kids together means I understand the guy?”_ ). Croach spoke briefly about his adventures working off his onus with Sparks Nevada, and the whole crowd watched him with an intensity of concern that made Red feel kind of angry until she realized she was looking at him exactly the same way. And Levi Jiminy just… rambled for a while about chili and singalongs under the stars and what Sparks had been like on his time off. 

Red had thought she’d be able to make some kind of grand speech, say something significant that people would remember about Nevada. But when she got up on the podium her mind just went blank.

“Sparks Nevada was the best man I ever knew,” she said. “I guess I loved him. And I… don’t know why he’s gone.”

She’d told herself she wasn’t going to start crying again. Turned out that didn’t work out too well.

Jim tried to go to her when she got off down the platform, but Croach got there first and that was probably better for everyone involved. Jim did, however, tell her, “I’m real, real sorry, Red, just give me a call anytime if you need something, all right?” as Croach held her hand and rubbed her thumb with his, and Jib Janeen gave both her and Croach unnecessarily long and slightly sticky hugs. 

Nevada’d been her first real friend, a long time ago when they were still still figurin’ stuff out and thought maybe they didn’t work together anymore as anything else. But she guessed he wouldn’t be her last, and that was comforting.

The funeral reception was pretty much a lot of wooden tables shoved into one another in the dappled shade at the edge of the square. People’d brought hastily pulled-together baked goods, and one terrifyingly large and suspiciously purplish bowl of pretzel-heavy snack mix. Croach kept dipping into it and trying to chew quietly, without much success.

Folks came up to them and told them quietly how sorry they were, and Croach accepted their condolences graciously if a bit indistinctly through the pretzels. Red just felt horribly awkward. People were behavin’ as if the two of them were Nevada’s only survivin’ relatives or something, and they really weren’t. 

They really, really weren’t, except that they kind of were.

Mostly Red just wanted to go _home_ at this point. She wanted this to be over and done with already so that people she didn’t even know would stop coming up and trying to talk to her about Sparks. She wanted to go out on the plains and ride hard until she was on the other side of the planet and then shoot something, make her own campfire and live out of her saddlebags and not talk to anyone for a couple weeks. Mostly she wanted to get _away_ from all these people, because she didn’t even recognize most of them and they weren’t making her feel any better about Sparks being gone.

But Jeremiah was here and Levi Jiminy was here and Myrna Jean and Spencer Cogswell and the Saloon AI in her new shiny robot body, and Red guessed she maybe cared more about the folks she did know in this town than she cared to admit. And strangely enough, they cared about _her_. So she guessed she’d have to stay. 

She squashed her claustrophobia down to a place where she’d only have to deal with it later, and turned to talk to the next group of people.

 

———

 

_Dear Pemily,_

_You don’t need my approval or anyone else’s for anything. You rebuilt the entire civilization of the Moon by yourself and didn’t even tell me, for gosh sakes._

_But just so you know, I couldn't be more proud of you if I tried. I've watched you grow up from an angry kid who just wanted to keep herself alive into a tough, smart Marshal who worked to make a better life for herself and everyone around her. I probably won't ever get a chance to have kids on my own, but I always thought of you on Father's Day._

_I know you’re going to have a long and happy life and keep helping out other people too. Be good, don’t shoot folks that don't need shooting, and give my love to Dolores too._

_Sincerely,_

_Sparks Nevada_

 

———

 

Six hours on Earth and Red found herself at a loss to understand what Sparks could possibly have found so important about this planet. She recognized the significance of being sentimental about the place you came from, she really did. But what she had seen of Arvida so far was gray and industrial in a way that might just have been shiny thirty years ago and so, so much less nice in every way than the open plains of G’loot Praktaw. She thought probably Sparks had been a lot more attached to the idea of this place than anything it actually was.

The service on Mars had been nice, it really had. But somehow on the long, cold rocket trip over here, the warm buzz of the Old Town community had burned away in the darkness of space. It was just her and Croach and the coffin now, a very long way away from anything that really mattered to her, and it made her so dang  _frustrated_ that Sparks was going to buried so far away from his real home.

She and Croach were holed up in a nice hotel for the night now so they could start the service early the next morning. Red hadn’t known exactly what to make of the look that the robot at the front desk gave her when she’d ordered one room with a double bed for the two of them and then hovered the cryo tube in as their only luggage, but it had sure made her want to shoot something. She’d been wanting to shoot something for a while now, ever since Jib Janeen showed up. Or maybe since the cyborgs, really.

She had fallen asleep beside Croach more easily than she’d expected to on an unfamiliar planet and with an unfamiliar ache of absence in her head and by her side. But when she woke up in the middle of the night, jarred out of sleep by unpleasant dreams, she was alone in the bed and _that_ jolted her all the way up in a panic. 

“Croach?” she called as close to quietly as she could manage, willing her eyes to adjust faster to the dim light. “You there, Croach?”

She couldn't see Croach anywhere even when her vision had adjusted to make out the half-colors of the furniture and the paintings on the walls. But her other nanotech-augmented senses had come online enough that she could hear his breathing from the other room.

She slipped out of bed and stood still for a minute before padding into the other room — it was more of a hallway, really — where the cryo tube was resting against the wall. The tube was a big, bulky, blue-silvery thing, heavier than she would have imagined with the hovertech turned off. Croach was sitting cross-legged on top of it, his eyes half-closed and his hand resting on the lid in such an intimate gesture that for a moment Red considered slipping back out and pretending she had never seen. But then Croach's antennae swiveled toward her and he jumped, jerking his hand back guiltily. "The Red Plains Rider—“

"Hey, Croach," Red said quietly. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean t'interrupt you."

Croach's eyes looked strange in the moonlight, all blue and refractory, and Red wondered if there was something Martians did that was like crying. She'd grown up with them and she had no idea. It wasn’t like she could have ever asked.

"I was just..." Croach said, and stopped. "Er. Paying my respects to Sparks Nevada."

"I know," Red said. “I know.” She hoisted herself onto the cryo tube — the glass could handle it, whatever — and nudged him with a knee. “Scoot over."

They sat in silence in the blue half-light from the street, backs against the wall, knees and arms touching lightly. Red had no idea what time it was and she really didn't care. She felt very tired in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with sleep. This wasn't, she thought, something she wanted to be doing. Any of this.

“We buried you once and you came back,” she said after a while. “Reckon that’s likely to happen again?”

“No,” Croach said. “I do not.”

“Yeah. Reckoned not.”

“I never had a chance to tell him the emotions I felt toward him,” Croach said. “For a long time I did not know I had them, and when I did know I was under the impression that he did not want me to express them. I… I regret him not knowing.”

“He knew, Croach,” Red said softly. “He weren’t good at feelings, but he knew.”

“I hope so.”

“Hope a new emotion of yours?”

“I am working on it.”

At least she had Croach, Red thought. And barring disaster, she’d have him for a very long time yet. Not that it made this particular thing much better.

“He knew we were going to outlive him,” she said. She stared down at her hands, brown and thin-fingered and much, much too smooth for any woman in her sixties. “I hate this. Croach, I hate this. I didn’t think about this when I went through the rites and I dunno why I didn’t. I never wanted to not be able to die _ever_."

"Nanotech doesn't — _does not_ confer immortality," Croach said. Red could read his expressions most of the time, even with the translation difficulties involved in human-learned emotions on a completely non-humanoid face, but this was one of the times when she really couldn’t tell what he was thinking. "It merely lengthens one's lifespan up to a point."

"Yeah. A long point." Red sighed. "We're... going to be around for a long time, ain’t we.”

“Yes. A long time by your human standards, at least.”

"At least we got each other."

"Yes."

"I miss him so much, the damn idiot."

“I do too,” Croach said very quietly. He whispered something in Martian that Red maybe wasn’t supposed to understand. But she still spoke the language, at least at the level of those words. 

_I miss you, Sparks. I miss you._

The night might be giving way to pre-dawn outside, Red thought. She couldn't quite tell yet whether the light outside was natural or not, and there were no birds in the city to let her know with a dawn chorus. She rested her palms flat against the smooth glass of the coffin and tried to pretend that there was anything comforting about the fact that Nevada was lying a foot and a half under her hands.

“I’ve forgotten the prayers,” she said. "I learned 'em from Barlok and I can't remember 'em. Damn it."

"I will say them," Croach said quickly.

"Nevada probably wouldn't a’ wanted you to. He didn't believe in much."

"Neither do I. I am still saying them. Out of onus to tradition. Traditions are important."

"Suppose they are," Red said. "Places you come from and all that."

"Apparently," Croach said, looking around pointedly.

Red sighed and leaned against his side. "Yeah, it's a long way from home, ain't it.”

“Yes. A very, very long way.”

Red yawned after a minute and Croach looked at her, worried. “You should go back to bed, the Red Plains Rider,” he said, rubbing her shoulder. “You have not yet slept an optimal amount in order to be rested for the coming day.”

“Yeah, that ain’t gonna happen,” Red said. The light outside was definitely pre-dawn now. “It’s the last night we all get to spend together, Croach,” she added. “Maybe the last night we spend all on the same planet. I ain’t going back to sleep for that.”

“That is not something I had thought of,” Croach said slowly, and Red immediately wished she hadn’t pointed it out. Nevada had been her man but he’d been Croach’s _hero,_ underneath all their bickering. For all that he was trying to hide it under his usual stoicism, Croach was taking his death real, real hard. Havin’ to pretend for a large part of your life that  you didn’t have emotions when you had all too many of ‘em didn’t tend to leave you too good at copin’. 

“You know what,” she said, “we’ll come back. We’ll just have to come back. Next year an’ the year after that. We can start a tradition, you and me. We’ll stop by for a day and let him know what’s goin’ on on G’loot Praktaw.” She patted the cryo tube. “Sorry, Nevada. _Mars_.”

Croach took her hand and rested his other hand on the tube — the three of them, linked for the last time — and they stayed there until the light through the curtains forced them up to face the day. 

 

———

 

The desert outside Arvida was cold when they arrived, the morning light pale over the sagebrush. Red pulled the hovercraft up clumsily beside the grave that someone had dug and they climbed out, Croach pulling the coffin after them. They’d left the cryo tube back at the hotel now Nevada didn’t need to stay in stasis anymore. It was just a simple wooden coffin now with some hovertech grafted on and almost nothing in it but Nevada’s body. 

Almost. Levi had picked a bunch of little yellow native Martian flowers from his ranch and given them to Red, and they were in the coffin now, resting on Nevada’s chest. Red didn’t know if that was what he would have wanted, but it sure made her feel better.

There were a few people waiting for them by the graveside, bundled up in heavy silver coats. They turned out to be Pemily and Dolores and three sleepy-looking kids of various ages, plus the man who had presumably dug the grave leaning against his backhoe a little ways off and playing a game on his holophone. And that was it.

Pemily waved to them and bounced over to hug Red hard. There were definite tears in her eyes. “Hey, Red. Long time no see. Hi, Croach.” She waved at him over Red’s shoulder, then broke away and stared at the coffin. “I still can’t believe this is happening.”

“Yep,” Red sighed. “But it’s happenin’, all right.” She stuck her hands in her pockets and wandered over to Dolores and the kids. “Howdy, Dolores. Howdy, Tessandra, Adelina, Sparky. Thank y’all for coming.” 

“Howdy, the Red Plains Rider,” they all chorused. 

There was something very heartening about the fact that Pemily had adopted kids, Red thought. Tessandra and Adelina were knobbly-wristed and dark-eyed young teens from the Venusian war zone who Red thought she could see hints of Pemily in, and maybe even her own young plains-wandering self a little. Dolores and Pemily had given them back their wide smiles after three years, and the last Red had heard of them they'd been going into one of the Moon’s engineering high schools. Sparky was only four, chunky and just as freckled as Pemily, and right now she was half-asleep on Dolores' hip. Red ruffled her hair absently.

There should have been more than this, she thought. There should have been people from the USSA and people from Arvida and people from off of Mars who knew who the Marshal of Mars was. People all over the galaxy shouldhave known who he was and come to see this, because Nevada deserved more at his burial than seven people and bare sagebrush and sky.

“We had a service on Mars already,” she said aloud. “I’m... not sure what we do now.”

Croach tugged the hovering coffin over to her. Pemily stared at it, and Red thought she could see the years dropping away from her face until she was just the teenage girl who’d had to kill all of her friends looking at the coffin of the man who’d thrown a block of wood at her head and then made her his deputy. 

“We put him in the ground, I guess,” Pemily said. She touched the coffin briefly and stepped back. “That’s what we’re here for, ain’t it.”

“Yeah,” Red said. “Yeah, reckon.” That was all they were really doing; just putting Nevada in the ground he wanted to be in. Alien ground that was somehow his, and she’d try to understand that but she didn’t really.

She nodded to Croach. He positioned the coffin over the grave, expressionless, and then did something brief to the controls that made the whole thing start to sink slowly. When it hit the dirt six feet below and stopped, there should have been fireworks; there should have been explosions or shouting or Sparks behind them saying “All right, what’re you guys doing?” But it was just a coffin and just dirt and nothing happened apart from the birds still calling in the distance.

Red picked up a handful of the oddly dull brown dirt and tossed it into the grave, and the others followed suit. The gravedigger wandered over and murmured a question to Croach which Red couldn’t quite hear, but she caught his sleeve as he headed toward the backhoe.

“Wait,” she said. “Just a minute.”

She went back to the hovercraft and dragged her guitar out from the back. It had been a birthday gift from Nevada a good handful of years ago, after he’d taught her to play on his guitar and decided she needed one of her own so she’d stop stealing his around campfires. The wood was imported from Earth but as red as the Martian plains, shiny and smooth and marbled, and it felt as close to home as Red knew.

“This one’s for you, Nevada,” she said under her breath, walking back to the rest of the group. She stood as close to the edge of the grave as she could, the toes of her boots lined up with the edge, and started strumming. Her singing voice wasn’t the best in the galaxy by any standards; it was low and unpolished and still let her rough Martian accent through sometimes. But it was good enough for this.

“ _By the light of the moon and the other moon_ ,” she sang, and her voice didn’t carry far but it resonated in her bones and into the earth and Nevada’s coffin.

“ _Out where the campfire’s glare irradiates the air_

_“Once I heard the tune of the scarlet dunes_

_“And the Marshal who upheld what’s right and fair.”_

Croach looked stunned; maybe because she’d written a song, maybe because of the words. Pemily looked like she might cry. Dolores just looked so, so proud.

“ _Ride along, Sparks Nevada_

_“May the gamma rays serenade your way  
_

_“Ride along, Sparks Nevada  
_

_“You’ve returned to Earth again today.”_

 

_———_

 

_Dear Red,_

_I’ve never been too good at talking about feelings and I know you know that because we’re kind of the same about that stuff. But we had a good thing, you and I. We have a good thing still, and I can hardly believe that’s true. After all the stupid stuff we’ve been through together and apart, we ended up staying with each other after all._

_I love you. I think I also love Croach (please don’t tell him that, seriously, I don’t want to get into it after I’m dead). I love our house. I love being Marshal. Loved, I guess, by the time you get to read this. And I loved Mars too, Red._

_I really do. I love the plains and the sky and the people here. The chili is better than any other chili I’ve ever had. Folks are braver, and nicer mostly._

_I’m getting buried on Earth because it’s where I’m from and you know that’s kind of who I am. Like I always said, it’s complicated. I guess after a while I didn’t really know whether being from Earth was really who I was or if it was just who other folks knew me as. I don’t reckon it really matters now._

_I’m getting buried on Earth because it’s where I’m from, but Red, Mars is my home. Old Town’s my home and the folks there are my folks and you and Croach are where I belong, wherever that is. I’m sorry I won’t be on the same planet as you anymore. But hey, the solar system isn’t as big as it used to be. Reckon we’re not really that far away from each other._

_I know you and Croach are going to be around for a while after I’m gone, unless something’s happened to one of you. Which I hope it hasn’t. Hope I didn’t die defending you, because that would probably be pretty stupid, but if I did you’re welcome. I’m sorry about the nanotech, I wasn’t too nice about that. But living forever just isn’t for me. I don’t think it’s right for people. When I go, I go._

_Anyway, I hope you two both keep on doing all your usual stuff. I’m pretty sure you can cope just fine without me. (At least on the shooting front. Reckon no one else makes better bacon omelets than me.)_

_I love you, I love you, I love you._

_Sparks_

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to everyone in the SN:MoM fandom on Tumblr, who inspired this fic in the first place, contributed ideas for a bunch of scenes, and helped me brainstorm. None of this would exist without you guys. Special thanks to Maddie aka mariusperkins, who beta’d for me.
> 
> Arvida is not a real town in Colorado. Arvada, however, is. It isn’t currently surrounded by desert, but things change over a thousand years.
> 
>  _Ride Along, Sparks Nevada_ is a real and gorgeous song and you should all have listened to it by now. It was written by Sean and Sara Watkins, not by me or by Red. Astrospurrrrrrrs originally suggested changing the tenses to apply to Sparks’ funeral. I hope you don’t mind, Watkinses.
> 
>  
> 
> Edit Jan. 2017: I spent this past year listening to the Sparks-and-Ginny arc and worrying that this fic was going to be completely jossed, and it turned out the only thing I had to change was one sentence. I firmly believe that Sparks and Ginny stayed friends, though.


End file.
